Afar from me and there with thee, Ah! could I journey there with thee, Across the sea of starry light; But nay, "tis thine own journey"s sea-- Good night, my love, good night, good night.
But golden Morn must sound her horn, And when the morning"s triton horn Is heralding thy homing flight, I"ll meet thee on the sh.o.r.es of morn,-- Good night, my love, good night, good night.
MY SOUTH
Of the languorous South with her wine-stained mouth, And her easy ways, I sing.
Ah! see where she stands, my lady of lands, With a rose in her hair and a gracious air, Where her lovers cling.
Will she play me false for the promised waltz, In that easiest way of hers?
Ah see! she is fair as the rose in her hair, And the sweet love drips from her honied lips, When her fancy stirs.
Will she lightly resist for the promised tryst With a smile of her easy ways?
Ah see! she is smiling with a sweetness beguiling All sorrow to laughter till it dances thereafter In a golden maze.
Alas! alack-a-day! she dances away!
Haphazard her favor confers.
Ah! see where she dances, and her sunlit glances All scattered apart! But I store in my heart A smile of hers.
TO LLOYD MIFFLIN
A Poet
And thou hast oped the matrix of sweet thought, And graven on the gem rare imagery.
Or piercing free thine arts reality, Hast found uncarven G.o.ds, as richly wraught; Such tints of soul, such matchless colors fraught With all thy beings dearest phantasy; Such fair illusive forms that luring flee, Within the crystal web of fancy caught.
Till to thine eyes, a radiant cosmos spreads In crystaline delight from pole to pole, Of G.o.dly folk at play on flowry meads, And one fair form of beauties finished whole!
Then through the golden mist one fancy threads: It is the G.o.d of G.o.ds, thy pristine soul.
KEATS
Thou golden fragment of the sweetest dream, That ever smiled beside the gates of morn, And left enraptured Beauty half forlorn And half entranced. Still for thy vanished gleam That spirit-maiden weeps. On her refulgent stream No more the tinted bark is lightly borne, But frail as thought by streaming phantoms torn, She waits forever thy returning beam.
A golden dream of art"s divinity And held bright Beauty"s jeweled anadem; Of music breathing immortality Till stoned silence falls a carven gem.
And but a fragment! Ah! couldst thou have sated A bursting heart, what worlds had been created!
A POET
As one, who gath"ring flowers in a dream, Hath found a vanished pa.s.sion all in bloom, And wild sweet odors lifting in the gloom Of olden time, but casts it on a stream, To mar the silver moon"s reflectant beam, And laugh at circles sweeping on to doom, In dusky marges, shining in her brume, Hath England found thee. Thus her silly deem!
Ah! Shame that she, whose head is vaunted so, Hath vision narrowed to a needle"s eye.
And only far from home, doth England know That she has doomed another son to die.
But fair Columbia brings her wreath of woe, Sweet Rhine, a tear, and lyric France a sigh.
THE CRITICS
And when thy soul had made a simple song And laughed for very glee to sing and sound it, Outside the walls, the dim mysterious throng Wrought keen and barbed darts wherewith to wound it: There was a fault, a fearful deadly fault, And loud they screamed a very bull"s-eye named it; As one they saw, as one they would a.s.sault-- Each kneeling archer drew his dart and aimed it.
And lo! How fared a myriad archetypes!
A myriad fancies, sounds, and colors riddled!
And harps! and horns! and flutes! and lutes! and pipes!
And O! the laugh as each some vict"ry twiddled!
But still the dainty spirit sang its song And laughed its laugh unconscious of a wrong.
AVAILABILITY
And shall I join this scramble after fame, Astonish so the free delightful spirit, To bind his song, that fettered ears may hear it, And win an encore, or a sounding name?
Or shall his broad imperial wings go lame, To make a semblance of existing merit?
Or fly no more less favor disinherit, And yield his lightness to an ordered game?
Not so! and never for the fickle throng, One soaring rapture less in fancy free!
But sing thou bonden music"s saddest wrong My spirit-bird, "til shackles melt for thee-- Still sing, for never yet thy spirit"s song, May bend to cra.s.s availability.
A PORTRAIT
She was a breath of forest-wild perfume So sweet, one could but stand and drink it in, Until the soul should burst; a dream so thin And airy fine, it seemed a spirit"s bloom, And left a haunting fragrance in the room When it had vanished. Garb"d in snowy lynn So rare one knew not where it did begin-- A scented sunbeam in a human gloom.
And thou hast called her woman, woman only, When thou hadst music yearning at thy tongue To call her Heaven. Aching fancy lonely Still breathes that fragrance in a song unsung, Or wandering, lost deep in a golden dream, Hears sweet white Lurley from a vanished stream.
ON THE DEATH OF A YOUNG LADY
Ah! Thou wert fairer than the early morn, Thy dress all spangled with the dewy flowers-- A lynn soft woven in the wondrous hours That hedged about thy dreams. But Lo! the horn Of some far Triton from the sea up-borne Across the bluey hills, and tinted showers Faint limning scenes of Elfin grots and bowers, Bound thee in thrall by misty strands forlorn.
Thou couldst not longer bide the sweet low calling Of some sad sea-soul for his wand"ring nymph.
Thou couldst not yield to mortal love"s enthralling And Nerius calling in thy spirits coralled lymph.